How to Love People Who Are Hate-able - Even Trump and Nazis

This is a follow-up to my article The Obsession With Punishment. Without reading that article you won't be in a place to receive what I'm about to give you. Please read that article before you go any further.

How to Love People Who Are Hate-able

We're in a transition time, all of us. It's a bit awkward as we evolve from a paradigm deeply steeped in fear, a more animalistic state, to one of love. That statement may seen preposterous to you if your world view is based on the one the media presents to you. The news scours the planet for violence. Many think the world is more violent, dangerous and hateful than it has ever been. But this is simply not true. The world is safer than it has ever been in recorded history. Instead of looking at the news as an indication of how safe you are, realistically look at your personal life and the life of those around you. The chances are that if you forgot to lock the door to your house, no one would enter. We're growing increasingly more tolerant of others. In the very near past, people were extremely xenophobic, meaning they were very afraid of people who weren't like them. Gay people and black people were seen as a threat to society. It is now utterly repugnant to almost every American to hold any ill feelings toward other races or sexes. I'm sure this is true in many other parts of the world, too, but I'll only speak of the culture I'm personally familiar enough with to speak with certainty. It's to those of you who fall in this category that I write.

The disgust you feel toward Trump, Nazis, bigots is part of this old paradigm that I speak of that's falling away. Hating another does nothing to improve any situations. First and foremost, it is actually damaging to you. If you're awake to your body, you will feel it responding when you feel disgust for another person. Feeling hate for someone is one of the most damaging things you can do to yourself. I tell you this from my own personal experience. Hating another will drive you insane. Just watch what happens to another person when they think of Donald Trump or Nazis. Watch nazis as they hate people. Watch anyone in a state of hate. Observe what's happening to them and their body.

Hating people who are bigots or who act in ways you disapprove of does nothing to help the situation. We are, however, erroneously steeped in the belief that it does.

Can you love those who hate? It seems preposterous, doesn't it? But why? Only because people have been shaming and punishing others for their bad deeds for all of recorded history. But this is simply and merely a false belief that has has no grounding in reality. Being shamed and punished is what has caused us all to be ill and cruel in the first place.

People who are cruel to others do so because they're scared. Racists are racist because they live extremely disconnected and alienated in a state of fear. Do you know what kind of life a person who is a Nazi had to endure? Do you realize that a healthy person who has been loved and nurtured and cared for does not do unhealthy things and have violent thoughts or hate others? Likewise, I 'm going to make a bold statement here, and it's bold because as you read this you still think your hate of the Nazi is justified. Likewise, you are deeply wounded and that is why YOU hate the Nazi. This is why you hate Trump. Because you have been shamed and hated in your own life and it is what you know. But it is not an effective way of changing another.

So now that I've laid out why hating another is not effective and is actually damaging, let's talk about how to love people who you find hate-able. The why is the biggest part. Once you change your belief that it is not effective, you've taken the biggest and most important step.

Now, the hate we feel for others is actually rooted in ourselves. We hate others to the extent that we hate ourselves. Wow. What an outrageous statement. It takes a lot of self awareness to recognize this. I'm speaking to you from my own personal experience. Heal the hate and shame you feel for yourself. Start loving those shadow aspects of yourself that you have dismissed and shunned and shamed and cut off from yourself. This doesn't happen overnight. Doing this work is your most important life work. It should be done regardless of your intent to love others. Loving yourself and accepting yourself is of the highest importance. Feeling compassion for others will come as as a natural consequence of healing yourself. When you feel compassion for yourself and see how what has been done to you has damaged you, you will understand the depth of the scars that people have who have been treated far worse than you. We've all been reared in a culture that hurts us. You don't realize this until you start your work of healing.

It's up to each of us to dig out the roots of fear and thus hatred and shame in our own lives. It's not our jobs to root these things out in Trump's life or in a Nazi's life. It is up to Trump and the Nazi. That is their work. Your job is to do your own work. Compassion and your example are your best tools for creating change in the world. It's when people are inspired that they can make changes in their lives. From love and inspiration we can heal. Hate, punishment, disdain adds more fear, more hate, more disdain on top of fear, hate, disdain. It may stop outward actions, but it does not inspire meaningful, lasting change, healing, or transformation which is possible for everyone. So go do your work and see how the people around you are affected. Do your own work and give up your expectation of others to do theirs. Give up your excuses not to do your work because of what others are doing. Give up blaming people who are unwell for your own life and take matters into your own hands by doing your own work.

None of what I'm saying is easy. This is highly evolved stuff. This is the work of stepping away from the crowd and from group-think and making deep transformations inside of yourself. We're literally transforming an ancient culture of fear. It is high, high work. When we do it we take ourselves from more animalistic beings to more and more subtle and advanced beings. Hate and shame are the old way, the way of fear. But we're just beginning now to change, and the roots are deep. The beliefs are the roots. It's up to each of us to dig out the roots of fear and thus hatred and shame in our own lives.

Your compassion for others is the reason you hate those who don't share the same compassion, so I'm going to ask you to use that same compassion you have for the downtrodden for the haters. They are the worst victims. Can you see that? Close your eyes now and imagine how a nazi experienced their childhood. Do it, really.

You probably imagined that they were hit or maybe even beat, and they were taught by others around them to hate others, which makes a person ill physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. Can you imagine what it must feel like to be that person? What do you think that person needs? Are you beginning to soften to that person? This is love, and if you got there with me you just made a major evolutionary breakthrough. You can now do this with everyone who wrongs you or you feel anger at in your own personal life. When you feel hurt about something someone does, take the focus off yourself for a moment, and imagine if you feel this way being around this person, how it must feel to be that person. Is that person an inherently evil person, or have they been hurt and shamed and maybe even physically harmed like you have in your own life, and maybe worse even?

This is a major paradigm shift that will trickle through every part of your being and your life. You will get and give more love. Your life will flow more smoothly. You will heal. You will heal yourself, and you will heal others. Feeling compassion for others in no way encourages their behavior. It in no way means that you allow a person to treat you any old way. As people who are transcending and evolving we quickly learn how to effectively set boundaries. Without hate blocking us and making us ineffective and ill we're able to roll up our sleeves and help others. Hating changes nothing. Writing about how terrible a nazi is does nothing. Rolling up your sleeves and helping others does. Serving does. Using your time, giving love, feeding people, donating, creating solutions. These are acts of love that help people. Stop using your valuable energy and time on this planet festering in hate. Everthing contains its opposite. Transform that hate into love and action and service. Don't focus on what Trump is doing. Roll up your sleeves and serve people. You do what needs to be done. And do it with love.

Accept that you live on a very diverse planet. Each person is a universe unto themselves. We're all here evolving and transforming at our own rate. (See Dr. David Hawkins' work on the map of consciousness) Because of this there will probably always be people who harm others. What?! No way! If I accept that, then I'm complacent. No. Again, that is the belief that merely hating something changes it, which it does not. It adds more of the same on to that thing. Being a healer means accepting with compassion where someone is. An effective healer who heals a person's physical illness is able to do so because they believe that person can be well. They don't see that person in their illness, they see them in wellness. This belief that the other has influences the sick person. Because they're inspired, they can heal. This is the same premise. Hating what you find undesirable does nothing to change it. Just like in your own life if you have a problem that you can't pay your mortgage, you hopefully know that it does nothing to sit around and hate the problem. You recognize that there's a problem and you find inspiration for how to solve it. Be that way in the world. Be that way when you see others behaving in ways that are harmful.

Can you find it exciting to live on a planet with such contrast and diversity? Can you be ok with another soul's journey? Can you hold space for them to have their own life experience and grow in their own time in their own way?

Can you love those who hate?

Edit: Check out this man who has made hundreds of KKK members leave the organization by befriending them.